


The Woman, in Portrait

by Anonymous



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Scandal In Belgravia, Asexual!Sherlock, Dominance, Drabble Sequence, F/F, F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Irene wants, and what she has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Woman, in Portrait

**I.**

After returning Sherlock's coat, you come home and make love to Kate with single-minded intensity. It takes her a long time to gather her breath enough to say, "What is Sherlock Holmes to you? What do you want from him?"

You imagine his body and his mind exposed, trembling, open for you to examine and tease apart at your leisure. He'll never let you have his body that way, you suspect, but his mind – well, you're already halfway there.

"I want to take him apart."

"Ah." There's a world of understanding in that syllable. Kate isn't jealous of your clients, or even the people you dominate for pleasure rather than business. She knows her place in your life: to hold you together after a long day of taking people apart.

But she won't need to put you back together. Sherlock is yours to disassemble, piece by piece. You're not his.

**II.**

Mycroft doesn't understand you or your work. He worries that Sherlock is drawn to you because you like to play games that hurt and control people, like Moriarty does. He's wrong on two counts. You know that games are only fun when everyone involved wants to play, and besides, your subs control you as much you control them. The rules of the game are set beforehand, and you always play by that unwritten book. You are controlled, too, by your desire to fracture your subs like diamonds, and watch the reflections in all the new facets so revealed.

There lies the answer to why Sherlock seeks out people like you and Moriarty. He has a mind like a diamond. He wants to see what happens when he puts it under pressure, and if it shatters, he wants to know all the new faces and edges he hadn't realized he had.

**III.**

Even when you don't text him, you compose messages to him in your head.

_I had a client today who wanted me to watch him write, and flog him whenever he made a grammatical or spelling error. You would have found him amusing._

_If you give me back my phone, I'll think of a puzzle that will entertain you for months._

Then there are thoughts that you will never share with him.

_Kate wasn't jealous of you, but she is now. She thinks you'll be the end of our relationship. She's right, but not in the way she thinks._

_My past is catching up with me. The people I've had under my thumb for years know I've gone up against the Holmeses, and they think it will be my downfall. They're closing in on me, and I don't know if the life I've made for myself is going to survive._

**IV.**

On a helicopter out of Karachi, you realize that Sherlock Holmes loves you.

It's not the sort of love you read about in books. He's never going to center his life around you: that place is reserved for John. You're not the one to look after him when he doesn't himself: that is for Mrs. Hudson. He's never going to get on his knees for you: he doesn't experience desire that way.

He will admire you, the way his chosen family admires him. He will believe there is goodness in you, the way his family believes the same of him. You will be a puzzle that he will never tire of reassembling.

If Sherlock has peered into the depths of you and seen that far, there must be more within you than you ever thought possible. There must be enough in you to build a new life on.

It starts today.


End file.
